How the Grinch Stole 保安

travelchina \ 2009-07-12

We have recently arrived in Beijing, home of really really warm weather and deserted Olympic stadiums. The day was spent wandering around the Olympic village and wandering through the Bird Nest and Water Cube. To give you a good idea of what these are imagine yourself at the Metrodome and make the white grey and you have the Bird’s Nest. Imagine 4 pools in a cube, the Water Cube. We’ll be in Bejing for 5 days, but the Forbidden City and the Great Wall are tentative.

Backing up a few days, we’re still in Bao An, Hubei.

Yucen’s cousin, who looks exactly like a Chinese Grinch came and stayed for a few days. The day after he got there Mr. Yin decided it would be a good idea to climb a mountain. His basis for us climbing was “40 years ago there was a path,” which of course means “Today there might be a path…but we’ll probably actually be walking through trees and underbrush that are our height.” There are some videos, but like most computers in China, it’s finicky. We ended our days in Bao An by traveling to Beijing by way of train. This train, however, was a train from Epcot. Not only did you have a family of confused Africans, a pair of Bros, and a car full of LOUD elementary schools, but we had STEVEN. Steven is a man sent from the far reaches of…probably Iowa. He’s all natural Iowan, which means his stomach is larger than Kevin and small cow combined. He vaguely resembles Santa Claus on a good day and an obese Iowan on a bad day. Steven was with the loud elementary school kids teaching them “english,” but we all know they don’t speak that in Iowa. Seriously, who hired him? (He doesn’t speak Chinese either)